Two Poems by Elizabeth Guthrie & Andrew K. Peterson

The line before the film

Powerless, the hysteria. Powerless stark blanket of wonder. Powerless the frequency. Powerless stroke of this time. Powerless, Allergic to Peppermint (the band name).

From the wreck of peerless eyes where they might have met, or in the turquoise six surround. He socked his hat upon her head and said he did what he said what he did but the fences need a-mending. But heart is struck, sneezed into the teeth of it like a small death. Coming upon Madrid, passing with care the sage. Precursor to a correctional facility controlled by shade. Cops, schmops, pudding pops! Out: in the snow bowl before Wolf Road, in the blue corn, shades anticipating nightfall. Far before it’s let out, put down restful. This place was not made for looking. And held its resistance in the close madness of its brush. Have you been here before? The time again upon an age laid out baring that hot red ball, feeling the sun through the glass. Did you dress? In turquoise? What in relation to the mining museum? Asking for cholla, the fence that greens in the rain. So far back from the ground, begging, where alfalfa grows un-scythed.

The Puzzle of Jude &Lizzie

What is this, that’s green with purple on the throat, this must be this one but not the one I thought, this one flapping in the air, face snuggled in there, does that one really go there?, You have to watch me on these late at night, then there is turkey butt feathers, hmm, and a beak that goes up top of a head and a beak, and a roiling tuft of rufflage, the beat of the thing that goes there, this little curled up foot on the ruffled edge, bird in there looking the wrong way, this the bottom then this is over here, somebody’s wing, bottom of the I, bottom of this green bird body, is that it?, well not quite but it is,saw something that needs some orange nice, can’t figure out whose eye that is, this is this but then whose is that?, probably just above pink down there and wing up there and nice a little more pink up, that isn’t it, Oh this is here, Oh I forgot what we’re doing, what’s this?, thank you, see the orange right there, little small one sticks out, those on the trees, what about those legs, those eyes, maybe it’s a beak, and some brown, and some green head with a piece of round beak, as it goes across the bottom above the pink palm, striped ridge, a tiny piece of purple, peeked out from behind a pink neck, maybe there, I keep getting little feet on butts, that’s white, and that belongs to him, well, that solves that mystery